Garmin Forerunner 645 Music

 

We’ve spent over a week running, cycling and generally testing with the Garmin Forerunner 645 Music, but this thing is pretty in-depth and we need to give the battery a few more cycles before we give a definitive verdict.

That said, we’ve got a lot of findings to share with you already - this fancy new watch adds in music, something that’s been missing from Garmin’s fitness trackers so far, and we’ve been pushing that pretty extensively.

That’s the main USP of the Forerunner 645 Music - the idea being that you can dispense with your phone and still have something that can tell you where you’ve been, how fast you’re going, when to push and slow down and still keep you entertained with music.

In this sense it’s Garmin playing catch-up to the Apple Watch 3 and Android Wear smartwatches, which all have integrated storage for music - but bringing its immense ability at fitness tracking.

On top of that you’re getting a top fitness tracker, something that not only counts steps, but sleep, stress and overall level of health, as well as being able to set up complex workouts too.

 Garmin Forerunner 645 Music price and release date 

Here’s the thing that will probably stop many in their tracks: the Garmin Forerunner 645 Music is going to cost around £399 / $399 (around AU$520) - which is a lot of any kind of running watch.

You can get a model without music for £350 / $350 (around AU$440) - but that would really strip it of the main USP.

It’s already available, with the release date hitting in February 2018. 

 Design, battery life and music 

One of the striking things about the Garmin Forerunner 645 is the design - the stylish metal around the 1.2-inch face has drawn some admiring looks so far, and certainly elevates it as one of the top Garmin watches in the fashion stakes.

It’s also lightweight, and the screen is as legible as most Garmin watches, with the transflective technology making it easy to read in most lights.

The battery life is something that worries us a little bit - this watch has a similar cost to the Forerunner 935, but has half the battery life. Five hours on GPS isn’t a lot for many Garmin watches, although we only lost 22% on a two-and-a-half hour run.

At the moment it’s lasting around 4-5 days with everyday activity, but we’re still waiting for the battery life to settle.

The fact you can sync millions of tracks from the iHeartRadio or Deezer to the Garmin Forerunner 645 is cool - the fact that neither service is available yet is not. There’s no word on Spotify, but we’d imagine the cost of hooking up with that brand is rather high at the moment.

The only way to get music on here is through a connection to your computer - if you’ve actually got any MP3s still kicking around you can sync them across, but it’s a slightly complex process.

The interface for playing music is fine, although navigating through using buttons can be a little fiddly. It’s nice having music on your runs, but until you can sync your Spotify playlists across, the Music element of the Forerunner 645 isn’t going to entice a lot of people.

Garmin Pay is also enabled, so you can use the watch as a contactless payment system, but in the UK where we’re reviewing the watch there aren’t many banks supported so we couldn’t test this.

The fitness elements of this watch are extensive; it seems that Garmin is now making most of its devices multi-sport, as you can track running, cycling, skiing, swimming and more.

It’s not quite fully-featured, but we found that the GPS lock was incredibly fast - one of the best we’ve seen on a watch.

It’s hard to comment on the activity tracking, simply because Garmin has had this nailed for years and it’s the same now. It might not be the most accessible for the absolute novice, but if you’ve got a modicum of confidence in the fitness space you’ll feel thoroughly looked after.

Early verdict

The Garmin Forerunner 645 Music is a nice step forward for the brand, but it’s more style over function. Battery life should be better for the price (and will, perhaps, improve with testing) and the musical element is too basic without the streaming services on board.

It looks great but for the price it might not be enough, especially as it’s been released without all the features fully ready.